Wednesday 8 July 2009, Dr. Saty Raghavachary, Dreamworks Animation explains how studios such as DreamWorks and Pixar make computer-animated movies. It explores the departments that make up a modern “production pipeline”, paying extra attention to computational techniques and software development problems. A variety of DreamWorks-related and ‘found’ clips will illustrate several facets of animation production (such as character animation and visual effects), focusing on techniques and technology.

About the Speaker

Saty joined DreamWorks in 1996, where he is now Head of Digital Training for DreamWorks Feature Animation. His film credits include “Monsters vs Aliens”, “Madagascar”, “Madagascar 2”, “Kung Fu Panda”, “Bee Movie”, “Shrek 3”, “Flushed Away”, “Over the Hedge”, “Shark Tale”, “Sinbad”, “Spirit”, “The Road to El Dorado”, and “The Prince of Egypt”. He is currently involved with “Shrek 4”, “How to Train Your Dragon”, and “Oobermind”, all scheduled to be released next year.

Saty is a part-time instructor at the University of Southern California and also teaches at Gnomon School of Visual Effects and TD College. He is the author of Rendering for Beginners: Image synthesis using RenderMan and a co-author of The RenderMan Shading Language Guide. Prior to joining DreamWorks he was Software Manager at MetroLight Studios. He holds three MS degrees and a PhD from The Ohio State University. He has a B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and is a member of Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE Computer Society, and American Mensa.